ECLIPSE

Yesterday morning, my lovely boy woke me up to see the eclipse! In my sluggish stupor I had forgotten all about it and I was most upset at being woken at the ungodly hour of, um, 0830. But when he told me the purpose of his interruption of my glorious slumber, I was totally OK with it. Maybe even a little excited.

We had Stargazing Live on on the telly, and we had a great view of the eclipse over the flats across the street. What with it being Manchester, it was predictably cloudy, but this actually worked in our favour. Sometimes we couldn’t see the Sun at all, but when it was visible,we were able to direct light through a pair of binoculars turned round the wrong way on to a piece of white card (really tiny Sun, but very clear). We also managed to get some photos of the eclipse when it was veiled by a thin cloud layer – this actually worked great because if there hadn’t been cloud, we wouldn’t have been able to see the eclipse with the naked eye (this would have been very dangerous!). It was difficult to tell whether it got slightly dimmer because of the eclipse or the cloud – or if it was just confirmation bias.

I remember the 1999 eclipse, and where I was living at the time it was much sunnier. But there wasn’t the same amount of enthusiasm for it in the groups I hung out with then, so I didn’t really appreciate it. But this time around it was way cooler. The 1999 eclipse was a 95% one from where I was living, and the 2015 partial solar eclipse was about 95% in Manchester too. Here’s the best pic I took, with a close up of the Sun (it’s still pretty unclear but you can just make it out):

I Am A Science Lady is a participant in the Amazon EU Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk.